(Bleep) in a box!

For those of you who spent the holidays under a rock or in a bottle, you probably missed all of Internet geekdom's viral excitement over this SNL musical sketch with Justin "I'm about to break out the acting!" Timberlake, officially entitled "A Special Christmas Box." It's a slick R&B riff about a special holiday gift, and the versatility of said gift - you can give it for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa; you can give it over at your parents' house, midday at the grocery store, and backstage at the Country Music Awards. If you liked "Lazy Sunday" or the Natalie Portman interview, this is your video.

 

On one hand, it's vintage SNL, taking a slightly bawdy joke, bleeping a recurring expletive and expanding said joke to occupy 240 seconds. On the other hand, it's all in the marketing: the NBC people, who once went ape over pirated copies of "Lazy Sunday" online, actually released this one themselves, uncut. And reaped a virtual whirlwind of buzz.

 

As a result, it's spawned a million imitators and several Web sites. (I won't publish the site names here, but if you watch the original, censored version of the video that I have linked to, you can use your imagination to figure them out.)

 

All this sudden edginess over in Rockefeller Center's Studio 8H seems to have one thing in common: Andy Samberg, who co-wrote and starred in all three viral videos. And it just warms the cockles of my heart to know that another witty, vaguely Jewish writer born in 1978 can make it to the top. Believe me, it provides a warm, chewy center of hope to the Cadbury egg that is my writing career!

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